The key is to understand the market. Sending it to every publisher on the planet with the wishful dream that maybe-they-don’t-publish-your-kind-of-book-simply-because-they’ve-never-read-anything-so-wonderful-as-what-you’ve-written-and-if-only-they-would-read-it-they-would-love-it, doesn’t work. Editors are inundated with that kind of wishful garbage, and their response is, well, NEXT! Target your market. Send to only a few publishers at a time (I recommend submitting to no more than five at once). Continue to hone your manuscript; revise if an editor has given you sage advice that you “feel in your bones” is good advice and, above all, persist.
I sold multiple books this way. I sold the DOYLE AND FOSSEY: SCIENCE DETECTIVES series to Dutton, an imprint of Penguin/Putnam, and TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD to Knopf, an imprint of Random House.
(The nitty-gritty: Initially I received a two-page rejection letter from the editor at Dutton. Unlike the other publishers who had rejected the manuscript with their gigantic-you’re-a-big-fat-loser-red-rubber-rejection-stamp, this particular editor detailed the reasons why the manuscript wasn’t working. I asked her if she would be willing to see a rewrite, she said yes, and the rest is history. Same thing happened with TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. I received a detailed rejection from the editor at Knopf, rewrote the manuscript, and it was subsequently accepted. And the rewrites were no easy-schmeazies, either. They were as meticulous and as meaningful as I could make them. I took three months rewriting TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, so long that when I did finally resubmit it, the editor thought I must have changed my mind and decided not to rewrite it after all. Looking back, I should have written her a brief progress note every few weeks to let her know I was still breathing.)
So, assuming your book is the next best thing since sliced bread, and assuming you study the market with the determination of a starving doctoral student and are targeting your submissions appropriately, then why have an agent at all? Don’t agents take a sizeable chunk out of an already skimpy pie? Why throw away your hard-earned cash?
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